1. Field of the Disclosure
The disclosure relates generally to vehicle operator information systems and, more particularly, to instrumentation user interface displays for vehicles such as marine vessels.
2. Brief Description of Related Technology
Vehicle operator information systems generally include one or more control panels or consoles that present data gathered from various systems or devices onboard the vehicle. The panels are often arranged in an instrumentation cluster of gauges that together define an operator control area, or helm. Each onboard system can then be monitored simultaneously by the vehicle operator from the operator control area.
Some vehicles, such as marine vessels, present instrumentation challenges and complexities arising from having, for instance, more than one engine. Associated with each engine are typically a number of sensors that monitor respective engine parameters, such as various pressures, temperatures, etc. Complicating matters further for the boat manufacturer or vessel outfitter, the same vessel may often be outfitted with different engines or engine types. The instrumentation requirements, and the resulting arrangement of gauges, can thus vary greatly from boat to boat. In the past, these variations have led to difficulties in establishing the proper connections between all of the sensors and the associated gauges.
A digital communication protocol and corresponding hardware interface was developed to simplify the transmission of engine and other data to the operator control area. Instead of having a dedicated, respective connection between each sensor and gauge pair, a communication network utilized the protocol and hardware interface to handle all of the data transmissions collectively. The protocol standardized communications between the sensors and the gauges, allowing transmissions over a controller area network (CAN) bus to which all of the devices were connected.
These and other developments unfortunately did not address the increasingly cluttered nature of operator control areas. The availability of the CAN bus facilitated increased communications, meaning that additional engine and other parameters could be monitored in the control area. The bus and the rest of the hardware interface also made the installation process less complicated. Meanwhile, vehicle complexity was increasing with the advent of various digital devices for monitoring a wide variety of conditions and variables of interest to the vehicle operator. And with these developments, the instrument panels of the operator control area were often populated with a dedicated analog gauge or display for each onboard sensor or device providing information to the operator. As a result, the operator was often overwhelmed with cluttered instrument panels with a growing number of gauges respectively dedicated to each of the onboard sensors and devices supported by the communication protocol and hardware interface technology.
User interface devices have been developed to replace the standard analog gauge with the intention of making vehicle operation and control more practicable. Such devices handle the data provided by multiple sensors or instruments and, in so doing, reduce the number of multiple, separate devices required in the control area. For instance, the SC1000 device available from Mercury Marine (Fond du Lac, Wis.) combines readouts for a number of instrumentation functions, such as engine speed, fuel range, water depth, and engine oil pressure. Instead of a dial-type, analog gauge with a movable needle, the SC1000 device has a digital, liquid crystal display (LCD) that allows a user to scroll through dedicated readouts of the supported functions. Each dedicated display depicts the numerical digits of the current value of the parameter measured by the function. Another device commercially available from Mercury Marine under the product name SC5000 organizes the instrumentation information in separate detailed display pages provided via an LCD display. Each display page of the SC5000 device presents instrumentation information in a pre-configured, or preset, manner. The series of display pages forms a slide-show approach to providing instrumentation information.
Both of the aforementioned Mercury Marine devices have the capability of automatically detecting or identifying system components connected to the CAN bus. This auto-detection feature is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,382,122, entitled “Method for Initializing a Marine Vessel Control System,” the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference. In operation, the auto-detection feature allows the engine type to determine a standard parameter set to be displayed via the LCD display. For example, if propulsion is provided with a stern drive with troll control capability, the standard parameters include engine temperature, volts/hours, engine speed, etc. Other parameters not monitored by (or relevant to) that engine type are excluded from the display pages of the slide-show.
The automatic detection of system components simplifies the assembly of the operator control area. The boat builder or vessel outfitter need only connect the unit having the LCD display to the CAN bus, and all of the necessary communications with the sensors are established.
While these improvements have reduced instrumentation clutter and eased installation and assembly, the aforementioned instrumentation devices fail to provide instrumentation information in the immediate, or simultaneous, fashion of the analog gauges and conventional instrument panels that they replaced. Specifically, the operator is undesirably forced to toggle between the preset display pages, which may be difficult or inconvenient during attempts to control the vessel. The toggling may be significantly time consuming, inasmuch as the information on each page is typically limited to one or two parameters. Moreover, the standard, pre-set displays of these devices are generally not customizable to meet operator preferences, or for that matter, the preferences of the boat manufacturer or vessel outfitter. Such preferences may change during use for a number of reasons, including, for instance, changing operational conditions or different operational states (e.g., docking, cruising, refueling, etc.). Still further, the pre-set display pages fail to provide the convenient trending information made available naturally via the movement of the needle pointers of the conventional analog gauges. For these reasons, the aforementioned devices at times provide limited benefits over conventional analog gauges during operation and use of the watercraft, such as when an operator wishes to monitor a set of operational parameters concurrently.